Acer unveils its first AMD-powered Chromebook

Acer has been an active player on the Chromebook scene for years, and has regularly stretched the conventions of the category. In 2015, the company introduced the first Chromebook OS laptop with a 15.6-inch display -- a size that has become common since. And with the new Chromebook 315, announced today at CES, Acer has another breakthrough under its proverbial belt: one of the first laptops -- along with the Chromebook 14 that HP announced this morning -- with an AMD chip under the hood to run Google's stripped-down Chrome OS.

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The Chromebook 315 is based closely on what used to be the least expensive 15.6-incher in Acer's Chromebook lineup, the Chromebook 15. That particular model features an Intel Pentium processor and starts at $400. The Chromebook 315, equipped with a seventh-gen AMD A-series processor and Radeon graphics, shaves $120 off of that -- for a starting price of $280. (Converted, about £220 or AU$395.) And that's a bellwether, folks.

Today, the vast majority of Chromebooks feature an Intel processor -- either a Pentium, Celeron or Core, with integrated Intel graphics. And though some analysts speculated that AMD would allow Intel to continue to dominate the low-margin Chromebook market, clearly, that's not the case. This development should be a net positive for Chromebook fans, who have tended to be particularly price-conscious, giving them more choice and driving the price of these systems even lower.

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We'll need to get the full list of specs and prices to figure out exactly how much lower. But, for now, we know that the new AMD-powered Chromebook 315 accommodates twice as much RAM (8GB) as the Intel-powered Chromebook 15 -- and features two USB-C ports, two USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 4.2 and a backlit keyboard (on the touchscreen model only).